During my thirty years of consulting I've become intrigued by the challenge of making organizations more simple -- for managers, employees, and customers. Nobody tries to make organizations more complex -- but it happens nonetheless -- and unless we actively counter that complexity it becomes hard to get things done. My consulting work and my writing therefore strives to inject simplicity into a complex world. When I'm not writing blogs, I'm a senior partner with Schaffer Consulting in Stamford, Connecticut. I'm also the author of a number of HBR articles and five books, the latest of which is "Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done" (Harvard Press).

Why Accountability Is So Muddled -- And How To Un-Muddle It

One of the most sacred tenets of management is the need for clear accountability. As such, organizations spend enormous amounts of time and energy defining jobs, roles, and goals — and then figure out who to reward or punish when things go well or poorly. The assumption of course is that people will perform more effectively if they know exactly what they are supposed to accomplish and what will happen if they make or miss the target.

But the reality of organizational life is never quite so black and white. More often than not, accountability is muddled, rewards are misapplied, consequences are watered down or never occur, and people do not see the direct connection between results and recognition. As the senior manager of a large technology firm said to one of my colleagues: “If you work hard and get good results here, you’ll be rewarded; and if you don’t work hard and get mediocre results, you’ll also be rewarded.”

From my experience, there are three common reasons that organizations fall into accountability traps like these.

The first is the complexity of your organization’s structure. Most companies have some version of a matrix, with a combination of enabling “functions” (such as IT, HR, and Finance) and line business units. In many cases there are further distinctions between “head office” and “field” units, and multiple levels of geography-based teams (regions, districts, countries). Trying to nail down accountability across these structures is extremely difficult, especially when each one has its own budget and priorities. In a large healthcare company, for example, the person technically accountable for a major customer has to work with the leaders and staff of at least six other organizational units, many more senior than her, in order to get anything done. This makes it virtually impossible to hold either the customer-leader, or any of the other unit heads, accountable for results.

Compounding the complexity of the organization structure is the fact that work processes are constantly evolving, and cut across different units. Because of these upstream and downstream interactions, it’s often difficult for people to know whether their actions have impact, or how changes in one part of the workflow will impact others. As a result, it’s easy for managers and employees to say that they did their jobs well, and any problems must have been caused somewhere else.

Finally, the third and most significant reason for fuzzy accountability is that people work hard to avoid it. There’s truth in the old saying, “Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan.” Managers are quick to take credit for good results, but are often reluctant to accept responsibility for failure. This is especially true in cultures that blindly punish people for missing their numbers, trying things that don’t work, or delaying deadlines in the face of other pressures. To avoid career-limiting consequences, managers go through all sorts of gyrations to diffuse or re-direct accountability, such as: blaming others, referring to circumstances outside their control, shifting resources to other areas, reorganizing, changing measurements mid-stream, or any number of other creative deflections. As a project manager once told me, “We can use one snowstorm for many months as an excuse for being late with our deliverables.”

So yes, accountability is difficult to nail down. But it’s not impossible. Start out by doing the following:

First, try to understand the reasons for unclear accountability. Use the reasons above as a starting point for a discussion with your team and your managers. Identify the cultural patterns that characterize your organization and think about ways to overcome them.

Second, make it clear who is accountable for what and how results will be measured. Make sure you set these rules before starting any cross-functional assignment. At the same time, communicate the upside of success and the downside of failure, so no one needs to guess what will happen.

Third, appoint process champions. Especially for activities that cut across different parts of the company, process champions will have end-to-end responsibility for achieving the desired metrics. These are difficult roles to play since they often come without full authority for all of the resources, but they are a step in the direction of single accountability for dispersed activities.

Almost all organizations talk about the importance of accountability, but making it happen isn’t so easy. What’s your experience?

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

The last sentence of this post which is the question “What’s your experience?”, is the whole ballgame. When the CEO of an organization claims she or he wants more personal accountability on the part of the VPs, I ask “Why?” The CEO will tell me about the exhaustion felt as finger pointing and blaming ensues when goals or targets are not met or needed changes are not being implemented. It is also apparent that very few VPs are much more than high-level managers. CEOs wish their VPs were strategic and would get out of the weeds but the VPs don’t know how to be strategic and their main reward comes from “getting things done” whether the big picture is achieved or not. Being rewarded for activity and not results comes at a high price and the source of the problem is the CEOs lack of personal accountability. My experience is that when the CEO understands their own mindset about accountability they change their mind about wanting others to be more personally accountable because their life becomes much harder if they are a reluctant leader. With accountable people around them a CEOs experience completely changes. The CEO is held to account. So I see far more effort being put into keeping accountability muddled because it pays more to keep your job than to do it at the top level of organizations. Before starting any effort in an organization to un-muddle accountability the most important exercise to engage in is telling the truth about all the downsides of accountability if your efforts work. Then you can make a clear-headed decision as to whether accountability in your culture is for you. Rarely is it a “how do I un-muddle accountability?” question. As a consultant on this subject I have to expose the lie that executives tell abut not knowing “how”. The downsides are just too great to them personally to put accountability in place. Until they shift their mindset about what accountability is and experience it as a competitive advantage that is non-punitive and hiding in plain sight, it is going to be the same hand-wringing we’ve seen for years.